MALIGNANT CATARRHAL EPIDEMIC. 171 
circulatory current of this animal should be as equally diffused 
as possible. The cracklings and tumours of which I have spoken 
indicate the necessity of keeping the surface of the body warm; 
and as you will find that the inflammatory stage quickly passes, 
and typhus under a more or less malignant form succeeds, I will 
allow' you to do that which I w as fearful of doing in the horse, viz. 
to resort to other means to support the strength, and restore the 
tone of the system, than merely to arrest the progress of the fever. 
The different destination of the horse and of cattle, and the dif¬ 
ferent character assumed by their diseases, require a correspond¬ 
ing difference of treatment; and aromatics and vegetable tonics 
may, in small doses, be sooner combined w ith the febrifuge medi¬ 
cine, or supersede it. Vegetable tonics, however, must alone be 
resorted to, which, while they give vigour to the digestive sys¬ 
tem, and remove the debility consequent on extensive inflam¬ 
mation of the mucous surfaces, have little effect in increasing the 
force of the circulation. The practice of every scientific veteri¬ 
narian, who has studied the diseases of cattle, has confirmed this 
distinction. Ginger, caraw'ays, gentian, and calombo, are the 
recognized aromatics and tonics of the cattle pharmacopoeia. 
With these exceptions, the directions given for the treatment 
of epidemic catarrh in horses is applicable to the same disease in 
cattle. 
The Malignant Catarrhal Epidemic. 
While epidemic catarrh oftener assumes a malignant form in 
cattle than in horses, that disease which is malignant from its 
very commencement is also more common. There are very few 
years in which it is not endemic. It principally appears in some 
districts, marshy and woody, or w'here under-draining has been 
neglected, or some farms where the cattle have been exposed 
and half starved; but it has not for many a year spread so 
widely or been so destructive as in former times. In the records 
of it which have been handed down to us, and in our present 
experience of it, it diflers materially in its symptoms and its 
treatment, according to the degree in which it is primarily an 
afl’ection of the respiratory or digestive passages, or coming 
under the description of malignant typhus, without any particular 
local affection. We have to do to-nio;ht wdth that alone which 
IS ongmally connected with the respiratory passages. 
Symptoms .—The cough is frequent and painful; the flanks 
heave; the pulse is small, hard, frequent, and sometimes irre¬ 
gular; the mouth hot; the root of the horn cold; the fseces 
oftenest hard and black, but at other times liquid, black, and 
fetid. In a few' days that symptom of almost every febrile af- 
